"Dudley Henriques" wrote in message
ink.net...

"David Brooks" wrote in message
...

IIRC, this discussion earlier revealed that the T-bird pilots have
super-wizzo-thingummy altimeters that can indeed set QFE at high
elevations.
Granted, yours and mine can't.

-- David Brooks

Hi David;

The Thunderbirds use a standard altimeter setting for the point of
demonstration and do not use a 0 altimeter set. Their maneuver profiles
are
corrected to MSL altitudes. Stricklin unfortunately on the way up the
front
side of his maneuver mentally "corrected" his reverse top target gate to
Nellis' elevation instead of where he was. This put the Viper way low of
where it should have been at the top side commit. He missed his visual
cues
as well. The airplane simply didn't have the g available vs the altitude
under it to cut the corner.

Well, yes, I got that. I think that was fairly clear from the descriptions
that erupted here a couple of months back. I was merely responding to the
assertion that altimeters don't go down that low, and I learned in the
earlier thread that the military ones do - not that they use this ability in
the shows.

I do seem to recall that the pilot makes a call at the top of his pattern to
a safety officer - was it of his height AGL? That does seem to be a weak
spot in the safety chain; if the pilot is calculating his elevation
incorrectly, the call of what he thinks is the value is not much use as a
crosscheck.

-- David Brooks